Art is 80

An editorial piece in yesterday’s New York Times was entitled “New York City Doesn’t Have Nearly Enough Free Bathrooms”, and included such lines as “New York should be the greatest city in the world, and it is time that our bathroom access reflects it”.

OK, a weird editorial, but it brought to mind my only thoughts about public access to toilets. And let’s be clear here, they aren’t “bath” rooms, are they? Isn’t a bath room a place where you can take a bath? (But I digress) Here are the thoughts that come to mind:

1. Men and women have different challenges in public toilets. Men usually have it much easier. I don’t know if that can be remedied.
2. Public bathrooms in the United States are generally free. But, in much of the world, you have to pay. And where you have to pay, you get better service: the bathrooms are cleaner. You may have some toiletries at your disposal. They are generally safer. What is the tradeoff?
3. I remember when I saw “Urinetown” – my reactions? (a) and embarrassing subject, (b) an extraordinarily clever show, and (c) you have to pay to go to the bathroom?
4. I am actually reading a book about this now. In my going through my Penguins, I came across a French novel from the 1920s, called “Clochemerle”, by Gabriel Chevalier. I don’t expect you ever heard of it. It is a satire, they say, on the relationship between ultra-secular France and the Catholic church. In a small town in the Beaujolais Region, the mayor decides the town needs to have its spirits lifted. It needs a new public facility – the new public facility is to be a fancy urinal (sorry, ladies), and the place to put it is right across the street from the town’s Catholic church.
5. I remember the pissoirs in Paris (and I guess throughout France?), where men could go in and do their business. They were not fully concealed. From the knees down, everything was open to public view. And to public smell. I think they are long gone now.
6. And then I remember somewhere in Italy (a country where every alley seemed to be a pissoir – again, apologies to the ladies), where there was a alley that actually had a ceramic urinal installed – totally in the open.
7. I remember the Washington University Law School bathroom, in the days before the new law school was built. You went downstairs, you went through a locker room (every student had a locker) and the through a large open door into the bathroom. There were very few female law students in those days (1960s) and the bathroom, open that it was to anyone in the locker room, was for men only. Women? Try across the campus somewhere.
8. And then there are the public bathrooms in bars, cafes and restaurants where signs like “Restrooms for customers only” seem to be more and more common.
9. And then there are those bathrooms in bars, cafes and restaurants which are particularly well designed: they will be the subject of the series of photo books I will never complete – or start – “Where to Go in Washington” and other places.
10. I am now reminded of public bathrooms in third world countries (some of which are not too third world at all), where toilet seats are rare, and where sometimes there is just a hole in the ground.
11. And speaking of that, what about all of those Don’s Johns and other Porta-potties which are just smelly holes? All can’t be like those we once ran into in Israel which were clean as can be and had a TV built into the inside of the door, so you could watch while you do your business.
12. Today, of course, with all of the gender issues running around – there is another question about bathrooms. Should they be multi-gender? Should they be gendered, but the patron chooses their own gender? Should all bathrooms be single use only? We were surprised in October, when we went to my 55th law school reunion and discovered that all of the bathrooms at obviously woke Yale Law are now multi-gender. It didn’t seem to be a problem for anyone. Maybe that is the answer. Maybe not

So many thoughts pop up. If New York City decides to expand its public toilets, it has a lot to consider.

Lisa Marie Presley and I had no relationship whatsoever. Let’s get that straight at the beginning. Now, let’s talk about her father.

I listened to a lot of Elvis Presley when I was in my last years of high school, and liked him a lot. Not visually – not sure I ever “saw” him then. Just the music. He was continually on the radio (I listened mainly to KWK, KXOK, WIL) in St. Louis), and I owned a couple of his albums. After high school, even though I hardly ever listened to rock and roll or the like, I always stopped and listened when a Presley record was on.

Move ahead 40 years. (That isn’t to today, but to the year 2000) The entire family went to Memphis to help my great aunt Rose celebrate her 100th birthday. She was my mother’s mother’s younger sister, and she thoroughly enjoyed her party, and left this world only days later.

While we were in Memphis, the family wanted to go to Graceland. I am not sure if I wanted to go, was indifferent, or didn’t want to go at all. But I know everyone else did. I was surprised to find it in a part of Memphis that was not where all the wealthy people seemed to live, and that it was a house that didn’t seem to be in a residential area at all.

It was big house, built in the 1930s, part of a 500 acre farm, which explains why it isn’t surrounded by other houses. I don’t know if the 500 acres still belong to Graceland, but I know that Presley bought it in 1957 (when he was in his early 20s) and remodeled it. Upon entering the house, I quickly realized that Presley (to me) had no taste as a decorator. It was such a stylized, 1950s house. “Modern” furniture, tiger rug, no patterns, simple and ugly. That’s how I remembered it. And it freaked me out, completely. And I never freak out.

I couldn’t imagine Elvis Presley, of whom I had a very set image, living in such a horrid place. Then, I looked at all the mannequins wearing Elvis costumes, and they seemed so stylized and old fashioned that, while I could imagine him in the costumes, I assumed he felt stupid wearing them. And there were so many, one sillier than the next.

And then I saw all the “gold” records, and thought they were fine as awards, but awful as decoration. Outside by the pool, I saw Elvis’ grave, next to his parents, with tons and tons of tourists traipsing by them. I couldn’t imagine a worse place to be buried (I understand that is where Lisa Marie is going to wind up).

There were tourists all around. Elvis could not have envisaged or wanted this. I was sure of that

I had to sit down. I couldn’t really look at anything. Most of the house I rushed through. I felt physically sick. And mentally disturbed. No place has ever affected me that way. I HATED IT.

No one else that I have ever talked to had that reaction. I don’t know why it hit me like it did. Heartbreak Hotel? No. But heartbreak something for sure.

My most immediate thought about Martin Luther King, Jr. is the day he was assassinated. I was in basic training at Ft. Ord California on that day in 1968, a member of the U.S. Army Reserve, in a company of Reservists. A few of us were from St. Louis, waiting to get back to our clerical unit at home. A large number were from Dallas, where they were part of a unit that, once basic training was over, was going to Ft. Bragg or some such place to learn to jump out of airplanes without having a heart attack. A third group was from Jonesboro Arkansas, and a fourth from semi-rural Louisiana, centered around the city of Alexandria. We had many university graduates, and we had people whose only job after high school was pumping case and washing car windows.

One day, we were on the rifle range. It was probably what you think it was. Very large. Very flat. A large number of us could fire our rifles at the same time towards targets, which were large white rectangles, with outlined bodies of men. You didn’t have to run up hills at the pace of a drill sergeant whose legs were taller than your entire body, and you didn’t have to crawl around in the mud. You stood there (or maybe you lay there, (I don’t really remember) and fired at the target.

This day was different. In the middle of our practice, there was a ceasefire order and a “special message” came over the loud speaker. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot and killed in Memphis. I guess everyone was shocked. Half of us stood there with our mouths open. The other half whooped it up and applauded. They were over joyed. When I heard that, my mouth opened further.

The next day or so, I was talking to one fellow in my company who I had become quite friendly with. A very nice guy, tall and a little chunky. He was from Louisiana, but he was not one of those who clapped. But he was not surprised. He had just received a letter from his mother. She would have clapped had she been in our company. Her words were something like “I’m glad they shot at least one of those Commie N……..s”. He was aghast. I think I was the only one he told.

(By the way, as you recall, Bobbie Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles just about two months later. He was shot at night, and we found out about it when we had our 6 a.m. reveille the next morning. Politics didn’t seem to play a role here. Everyone was shocked. What is the world coming to? We were waging war in Vietnam for reasons most of us did not understand, and at home everything was falling apart. We were on base, in a protected military cocoon, but what would become of us when we were sent back home? I remember that one of the songs you heard over and over on the radio when I was at Ft. Ord was “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?”. I was amused because, being just about 60 miles from San Jose, I could answer that question with confidence. A month earlier? Not so sure. But on that morning, I did not know my way anywhere with any confidence whatsoever)

Years later, when we were in Memphis, Edie and I (and maybe Michelle and Hannah – I don’t remember which trip it was) went to the Lorraine Motel to the room where Martin Luther King, Jr was shot. I assume it is still open as a memorial – it is very evocative, and you should go.

The New York Times this morning has a front page article entitled “As Historical Dramas Mushroom, So Do Complaints About Their Inaccuracies”. It speaks to the “historical” dramas with made up facts, that are meant to look to be historically accurate.

I have been concerned about this for some time. On previous blogs in varying blog posts, on Facebook, and it private conversations, I have railed about fake histories. For years.

The NYT article focuses on the British royal family and The Crown. That’s probably a good one to focus on, although I have watched very little of it. But there are many, many, many examples.

My own practice when I watch a biopic, or any historical drama is to go to my friend Professor Google, a master historian, and check up on the real facts. Then I complain to anyone interested in the film or show about the inaccuracies. While I am always waiting for a response like “Wow, thanks. I had no idea. They shouldn’t do that. What can we do?”, the response I usually get is “That’s interesting”. A “that’s interesting” that usually seems to be “that’s not very interesting at all”. And any response is followed by a remark like “artistic freedom, you know”.

The question is whether or not history is important. Because, like it or not, people these days learn history from these shows and films, not from taking courses or reading detailed biographies or histories. So, the reality of the history becomes the fake reality of the video, not the real history of the legitimate historians.

Now, when Philip Roth wrote “The Plot Against America”, an excellent novel about the presidency of Charles Lindbergh, everyone knew that this was make believe “history”. Same with, say, Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here”. I have no problem with that. They are clearly fictionalized, and normally written not only to entertain, but to make a moral point, to teach a lesson. A lesson by analogy.

But that is not what you find in modern entertainment. There are hundreds (probably thousands) of examples. The one that comes first to my mind is a drama performed at Theater J about a decade ago called “The New Jerusalem: the Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza”. Written by the more than talented playwright David Ives, it was a gripping and well performed production. Set in 17th century Amsterdam, a relatively liberal city that housed, in its diverse population, many Jews whose families had been victimized by the Catholic Inquisition in Portugal, it tells the story of Baruch Spinoza, young intellectual who had the temerity to speak out against certain aspects of biblical and rabbinic Judaism and posit a form of philosophy that was remarkably non-sectarian. Spinoza was excommunicated by the Jewish community of Amsterdam, and forced to lead a solitary and impoverished life, eking out an income as a lens grinder, unable to marry (there was no one who could perform a marriage for him) and create a family.

The play centered on a relationship between Spinoza and his girl friend (I don’t think such a girl friend existed), and upon the “trial” after which the Jewish authorities placed its ban on Spinoza. At the trial, various people testified, including – as I remember it – a representative of the Christian community, and Spinoza’s sister (who may or may not have existed) gave an impassioned plea from the audience.

Of course, such a trial never took place and, if the rabbinic authorities had such an open proceeding, it is hard to believe that they would listen to the words of a Christian, or the words of a woman. It was all made up.

I was infuriated by the play – it purported to “tell the story” of Spinoza. It obviously didn’t do that. And the reviews (I just looked again at a few of them) did not at all try to differentiate between the history and the fantasy.

Films, shows, stories about American history are much the same. There was a recent film about Harriet Tubman – a lot of excitement, most of which the real Harriet Tubman was able to avoid. The recent award winning film about Churchill and Dunkirk contained much that didn’t happen. And on and on.

It seems to me, without trying to stifle “artistic freedom” or “artistic license” (whatever that is), attempts should be made to inform the public where the entertainment piece varies from historic truth. Perhaps, when the forum is live theater, it could be done with pieces in the playbill, or separate statements handed out to attendees. Information could be provided to critics who would be writing reviews. Where the play is discussed on line, material could be highlighted talking about the historic distortions.

Much of this could also be done in cases of movies (where there could also be screen shots stating that “the scenes of ____ and ____ are not historical. For a historical account, see _________ or _____”. There are many ways that these “historical dramas” could be converted away from fake news to elements to teach actual history, along with permitting artistic changes for entertainment’s sake alone.

Of course, historians themselves show a bias, as to documentary films, and the like. And when there are distortions here, there needs to be push back to be sure. But this is a different situation (or in some cases a different problem). Maybe I will deal with this on a different posting.

I started my first blog in 2005. I printed everything out then and put it all in a loose leaf folder. I was working and my office had a copy machine, so it was easy to do that. But that was then and this is now.

I have been reading through my 2005 blog. I think it was better than this one. So far. I did have an entry almost every day. Some were long, some were short. But they were clever.

There were differences in my life then. For one thing, I was 18 years younger (not young, but younger) – I think that makes a difference. And I got around more. I went to museums, for example and I wrote about that. And to see films. I wrote reviews of books that I read. A good mixture.

And then I wrote about trips that I had taken, and things that occurred throughout my life. I liked those entries, and I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, but maybe I should just copy them from time to time into this blog. I may try that. You would enjoy them, I think.

But today, let’s just stick with the New York Times. The front page.

1. First, “Idaho suspect wrote of a life of no emotion”, and that he could “do whatever I want with little remorse”. WHOA!! When word of the suspect first hit the news, I thought of Dostoevsky and “Crime and Punishment”. Remember Raskolnikov? The student who figured out how to commit the perfect crime, the murder of an old woman (an informal pawnbroker) in her apartment? And it turned out that it wasn’t so perfect, after all? But that, for most of the book, the investigation did not focus on Raskolnikov, and that even when Raskolnikov wanted to show the police that he, indeed, had committed this crime, and brought to them evidence that should have led right to him, they ignored him? Didn’t believe him? That’s who I thought of when I first read about Kohberger. But maybe that’s not the best example, for after all Raskolnikov eventually did show remorse as he was sent off to prison exile. Maybe a better choice would have been……..ta da…….Donald Trump. Does I can “do whatever I want with little remorse” sound like “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters”? Doesn’t Trump lead a life with no remorse? Hmmm.
2. Second, there was a front page article about a fellow named Larry Price, Jr., who staged his own kidnapping or mugging in order to hide the fact that he was trying to escape some folks who were involved with him in a number of illegal activities. I hadn’t heard about this case, and don’t know if I am really interested in it. But I am interested in the fact that it took place in Bluefield VA. Bluefield VA adjoins Bluefield WV, and I once spent a lonely a couple of days in Bluefield WV, probably about 30 years ago or more. I had a client who was engaged in a major conversion of an old downtown hotel into housing for seniors, and I flew into Bluefield for a short meeting, with the intent to fly back late that afternoon. But the beautiful 50+ degree day quickly changed, and by the time that I finished my lunch meeting, the temperature had fallen 20 degrees and it was snowing hard. I then learned that the small Bluefield airport had closed because of the weather. It was a Friday, and I soon learned that it was not only closed for the day, but it was not planning on opening before Monday. Big deal, I said to myself, I will rent a car and drive home. Snow never scared me. But the only auto rental company in Bluefield was Hertz and, guess what?, its office were located at the airport and they would be closed until Monday. I was stuck. There was a small motel with an available room, so I checked in. There was a modest restaurant next to the motel that served pancakes for three meals a day. Luckily, the winter Olympics were on TV, so I wasn’t completely bored. But I figured that I was OK, since the snow was so deep that everything was paralyzed and in that way I was caught like everyone else, not (in that sense) alone at all. But as I watched TV, it occurred to me that most of the world, including the local world was still operating. And, after thinking a bit, I decided to see if any close airport was open. I learned that I could fly home from Roanoke VA (about 100 miles away) and decided to see if I could get a taxi to take me there for a price less than the price of another day or two in the motel. I called a taxi company and they said they could come and drive me. So I said OK. The cab came Sunday morning, and I got in. Bluefield still had a few feet of snow on the ground and the roads were hard to navigate, but once we got on the Interstate, the roads were clear and the sailing was smooth. I realized that while Bluefield had been socked in, it was alone in being socked in and I could have gone to Roanoke on Friday to fly home. My vision had just been clouded by the clouds and snow.
3. Third, there’s an article titled “Even a Little Alcohol Can Harm Your Health, Research Shows”. There are so many studies saying that moderate alcohol is good, no, it’s bad, no, it’s OK, that you really don’t know what is right and what is wrong. But I was struck by the following advice “So people who are drinking five or six drinks a day, if they can cut back to three or four…….”. That’s when I realized that maybe this article wasn’t speaking to me. I actually have cut back over the past six months or so. I was never “a drinker”, but I might have a glass of something (rarely more than one) most evenings. Now, maybe I have a drink two or three times a week. Why did I cut back? I don’t know. But it happened after I recovered from Covid in June. Connection? Maybe, I guess.

That’s it for today. Back to my regularly scheduled activities.

(Oh, one more thing. Edie tells me that all my posts have typos. That is largely because they are all first drafts; I don’t read them over to proof or edit. The same was true in 2005. I had more typos then)

The question is: Name two businesses that you wish would be wiped off the face of the earth.

It gets harder and harder to watch anything on TV or listen to anything on the radio that have sponsors without turning off the sound whenever their ads air. Between all of the pharmaceuticals with unmemorable names (I do remember the name Prevagen, which shows that I don’t need it, and I do want to take Skyrizi, because I like to say the name) and now these gambling sites (which come with the welcome “If you have a gambling problem,….”), I turn off a lot of sound.

But then I thought: Maybe I should place a bet with Fan Duel or Draft Kings, as long as I am comfortable with knowing that I can’t lose the bet. But, I changed my mind, so I will bet any of you readers: I bet that George Santos is going to resign. Any takers?

And why, on such a sure bet, did I change my mind?

I thought about this as I was listening today to Georgia Tech (of all places) professor Jeremy England (a Haberman Institute program) talk about the imperfections of science in predicting the future, no matter how much you tried to predict the future, because (1) you never know fully how one thing connects to the other (he called in the butterfly theory – if a butterfly flaps his wings, does that affect the likelihood of a hurricane on the other side of the world), and – since this was a talk on science and Judaism – (2) some things may only be understood through divine intervention. (This is probably an awful condensation of a very interesting talk)

If Jeremy England is right (or at least if my version of Jeremy England is right), then I could bet that George Santos will resign, but find out that he won’t – either because a butterfly flapped its wings in, say, Dubai, or because God intervened and kept him in office. The first of these possibilities is something I just can’t know, and the second something that I would imagine I couldn’t influence.

So, tonight I am watching the news. The Biden story on classified documents requires a detailed analysis, and is dependent on facts we don’t yet know. It’s different from the Trump story on classified documents in major ways, because Trump denied he had any classified documents, and then said that he declassified the classify documents that he didn’t have, necessitating an FBI search. Other than that, whether the cases are similar, we don’t really know.

And then there is this guy Matt Schlapp. I was always suspicious of him, so if he did what Mr. Republican Anonymous said he did, I am not surprised and, as usual, expect other Mr. Republican Anonymouses will come out of the woodwork, as all other sorts of mouses do.

And then there’s this guy who it looks like murdered his wife. I have never had any thoughts about murdering my, or anyone else’s, wife, but now I know what I shouldn’t do. I shouldn’t ask Prof. Google how to dispose of, or how to hack up, a body. That would be a big mistake, as this guy is finding out.

That’s it for now. Oh, and for the record – I also cut the sound on ads from the Shriner’s Hospital and St. Jude (not because they don’t do good work, but because their adds are tearjerkingly bad), as well as Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and more. There were, for sure, many things bad about the USSR – but one thing strikes me today. When you watched TV or listen to the radio……you never had to put up with ads.

I had an early morning breakfast appointment today in Olney MD at the Royal Bagel Bakery. For those not familiar with this area, Olnehy is just about 15 miles from here. It’s an easy shot – when I turn onto Connecticut Avenue, one block from my house – I just stay on Connecticut until it ends at/merges with Georgia Avenue in Aspen Hill and keep on going until I get to Olney. When we move to Judean Gardens Cemetery many years hence, the trip to Royal Bagel Bakery will only take about 5 minutes, so that will make it a lot easier.

At any rate, this was a new bagel bakery for me, and the bagels are quite good. We generally get our bagels either from Bethesda Bagels or Goldberg’s Bagels, but Royal Bagel Bakery, as well as the Bagelry (where Randolph Road meets New Hampshire Ave, about 10 miles from here) are equally as good. Closer bagels include the bagels at grocery stores (not good), Breads Unlimited (not good), and Bread Furst (limited variety and expensive), and a brand new source, Mamma’s on Connecticut Avenue at Livingston. Mamma’s is primarily a pizza house, but the storefront used to be Pumpernickel’s Bagels (I know, cognitive dissonance), which went out of business 5 or so years ago. Maybe the bagel ovens were still in the basement, but Mamma’s announced a few weeks ago that they were going to make there own bagels and open for breakfast. We shall see; no chance to go there yet. And then there is Call Your Mother, a deli-type restaurant taking over the Little Red Fox space about 1500 feet from here, but based on my tasting their bagels at the Capitol Hill location, I am not holding my breath.

So be it. But let’s digress. What are the House Republicans thinking? It seems clear. They are not thinking about legislation. They are not thinking about finding ways to cooperate with or work with the Democrats. They are going to use the next year or two to investigate and impeach, with the hope that they (facts aside) will be able to convince not only their general supporters, but others as well, that the Democrats should crawl back under their rocks. And, based on what we know of the general American public, they might be right.

Which should I tell you first?

OK, the humidifier.

Last night, a little before midnight, Edie and I heard a crash. It sounded close, but we found nothing wrong on the second floor. There seemed to be no good reason to go downstairs to search – once something falls, it can clearly wait until the next day.

The mystery was solved early in the morning, where we saw that a large part of the humidifier attached to the furnace had fallen off. We called our HVAC regulars and they found that something had snapped causing the fall, and that the fan had been affected by falling and could no longer spin smoothly enough.

So, we were told, we need a new humidifier (ours was probably between 15 and 20 years old). OK, I thought. And then I asked the next question: how much is new humidifier? I expected maybe $200 or $300, but no!! $1100 to $1500. Really? (I still don’t know the details)

So……since early December, our house has required the following:

1. A new furnace.
2. A new humidifier
3. Dishwasher repair
4. New kitchen faucet
5. New Terminex contract because we seem to have a mouse
6. Installing reflectors to scare away the woodpeckers that were drilling holes in the house.

And we have, during that same time:

1. Repainted all the wood trim on the outside
2. Repainted all the outside doors
3. Repainted our picket fence.
4. Repainted and done minor repairs in an upstairs bathroom
5. Power washed the house and the walkways, the driveway, the stone fence around our property.

I thought when I turned 80, I might start to fall apart (still possible, of course), but no – it’s the house that needs everything.

Now, on to Kazakhstan.

I took a 45 minute trip through Kazakhstan on the Cool Vision YouTube channel while I drove about 7 miles on my stationery bike. Wow! The cities of Astana and Almaty are spectacular. The mountains, lakes and agricultural portion of the country are beautiful.

I won’t say more. Find the YouTube video and tell me what you think.

(1). I don’t usually subscribe to “channels” on YouTube. I am not even sure what a YouTube channel is, but I saw a video made by a young Russian woman several months ago called “Eli from Russia”. In the midst of this terrible war, Eli is creating 30 minute videos to show “the real Russia”, and I have enjoyed the few I have seen so far. This morning, I accompanied her on a trip from Yakutsk to Omyakom, which just took place. That is, in the middle of the winter (of course, in those places, winter is a seven month season), with temperatures between 40 and 55 degrees below zero.

We saw beautiful scenery – frozen lakes and rivers, snowy mountain views and so forth. We traveled about 600 kilometers, I think, over the one road that exists, but that meant driving on the frozen River Lena for a while, driving on a well kept, cleared road for a while, and waiting while the narrow road was totally blocked by a car that had sunk into some ice and could only be removed by being towed.

Omyakom is a small Siberian village in the large Sakha Republic of Russia, with a population of about 650, and with the distinction of being the coldest inhabited place on earth. We spoke with native farmers and with a native crafts person and author. We went ice fishing, and even ice swimming (well, dipping). We saw the unique breed of Yakutian horses. We learned about eating raw horse to help ward off scurvy. We learned about village central heating, and available wifi. We learned how cars are protected from the bitter cold. And we learned that the natives are so accustomed to the weather that if it is over below 40, they are pretty comfortable.

(2) I started a class today on Torah-in-Motion website. Torah-in-Motion is a Toronto based website, run by an orthodox rabbi, which has an extraordinarily full schedule, and on which I have taken several classes. I hesitated on this one, only because I am six classes behind on the last one I took. This is OK, because (a) the classes are free, and (b) because they are immediately available on YouTube, but still…..The last class was on the Book of Daniel, about which I know virtually nothing. It is a text based class, slowly going through the book (English, with Hebrew gloss), something that I normally find tiring, but in this case, because it gave me an overview of Babylonian and Babylonian Jewish history, I found fascinating. But it isn’t the kind of class you can listen to while you’re driving to the grocery store; it’s a class that takes an hour of concentration, and those are hard to find when there are so many other options. The Daniel class is taught by Rabbi Moshe Shulman, the rabbi of Young Israel in St. Louis

At any rate, the current class has a more complicated title: “Halalkha, Public Policy and End of Life Dilemmas”. The first session, which I attended today, was titled: “Are Jews Obligated to Spread Observance of the Seven Noahide Law? Ethics, Interests and Moral Ecology”. Enough to drive anyone away, huh?

The instructor is a young rabbi named Shlomo Brody. Originally from Houston he is now the director of the Halachic Organ Donor Society in Israel and a columnist for the Jerusalem Post. He is an extremely personable instructor and seems to have a large range of interests, all related to the intersection between Jewish law and public policy. An interesting combination you don’t always find. He seemed quite bright, so I was only partially surprised to learn he is a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard. He is currently a post doctoral fellow at Bar Illan University.

Speaking from a Jewish perspective, his points today were (as far as I noted them down):

Why should Jews bring a Jewish perspective to public policy issues? 1. Things in our non-Jewish world affect our Jewish world. 2. We live in societies which can only continue if they are governed by civil discourse and law, and its our obligation to participate in the civil discourse and the structuring of the laws. 3. Because all humans are made in the image of God, civil discourse and laws should recognize that. 4. Without doing this, how will we become a “light to the nations”.

Is this purpose of this to protect Jews in their observance of Jewish law, or to convince others? The Lubavitcher Rebbe apparently would say that Jews should convince others, as well as protect themselves, although most other Jewish scholars do not go that far. So that is one question. (He also cited a Canadian Jewish scholar, David Novack, who said that if gentiles would study Talmud, maybe more Jews would study Talmud). And clearly civil law should be followed by Jews resident in a civil society.

There is much more to be discussed in this class, taking specific issues and looking at them from both a Jewish and a public policy perspective. A number of elements need to be considered: human autonomy, community preferences, legal provisions, religious considerations, ethical and moral thinking.

We shall see what comes next.

(3) 100 year old Bernard Kalb passed away, after suffering injuries from a fall. Did you see the obituary in the Post today? A cute reference: apparently one day, the mother of Bernard and his brother Marvin called at CBS, where they both worked, and told the operator “Hello, this is Marvin Kalb’s mother. Is Bernie in?”

(4) The clock on the wall tells me it is 4:32. You know what that means. Only 28 minutes until we can watch the House of Representatives agree to, or not agree to, the rules of the game.

When Donald Trump became president, my attitude was: well this will be a problem, but it’s an aberration and in four years, how much harm can he do? It turned out that he could do more to tear things apart than I thought he could.

When Joe Biden became president, I breathed deeply and was certain that things would now start to right themselves, although it would take a little time to undo the harm Trump had done. It turned out that it was unclear that things would right themselves, and that it would take much longer than I had thought it would because the Trump years were so detrimental.

The result was that on Jan 1, 2021, I was certain we were on the right path and that (seeing what happened over that entire year) on Jan 1, 2022 I hoped we were on the right path. Today, January 8, 2023 (Happy 88th, Elvis!), I am concerned that there is no right path.

I believe that 2023, or at least the first half of 2023, will be frustrating, confusing, dangerous, and fascinating. Only one of those four characteristics is positive, and 1 to 3 is a poor ratio.

I will watch the House tomorrow to see how the proposed McCarthy rules package is treated. My guess is that there might be a repeat of the Speaker chaos – after all, four defects from the Republicans on the rules package will block its passage.

The radical right wing House will not be able to put into effect any legislation that does not pass the Democratic Senate, so not much of a danger there. But the danger will be inaction – nothing will pass the House that can pass the Senate, and important matters (debt ceiling increase, appropriations) won’t be moved along at all. Simple paralysis.

In the meantime, we are going to be facing interminable investigations which will go nowhere, and we will beset with problems that are beyond the jurisdiction of Congress. For example, continued and increasing weather disasters, and foreign problems caused by the new right wing Israeli government, by the continuing Russian-Ukrainian war, by China putting more pressure on Taiwan, and so forth.

A bumpy ride, for sure. Hopefully, not more than that. And I hope we all remain safe and sound. Reminds me of that oft-stated Chinese proverb: May you live in interesting times…..but only by Zoom.

*************************************

Has this young blog become a broken record already? There is just so much to worry about.

I have to have more varied content.

By the way, last year I read 106 books, and I should at least name the ones I liked the best. My reading is largely coming from my collection of Penguins, so I am not reading what you are reading. I read 3 books the first week of this year: “The Roots of Heaven” by Romain Gary, a 1950s novel set in French Africa, where protection of elephants from big game hunters and poachers get mixed up with anti-colonialist revolts (I had a hard time keeping the characters straight, and the books is dense, but its message is interesting and the book was apparently quite influential when it came out first); “Foreigners” by Leo Walmsley, a fictionalized memoir of the author’s early life in a fishing town in North Yorkshire; C.S. Forester’s “Brown on Resolution”, a short and terrific story of a woman with an unwanted pregnancy and her goal for her son to follow his father (whom she only met one time, and he knows nothing about) into the British navy.

I am now reading “The Green Mare”, a French farce by Marcel Ayme. So far, it is quite clever and not at all worth spending time on.

Donald Trump will try to take credit for the election of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. If he will be correct in that (and he may be right), I will give him one more. Donald Trump can take credit for this post. For, after all, if McCarthy hadn’t been elected, undoubtedly I would have written something very different.

When Congress reconvenes on Monday, the House will try to pass the rules package that McCarthy had worked out with various members of his party. The rules of the Pelosi era have expired, and the House needs rules. The sessions leading to the election of the Speaker were governed by what I have heard referred to as general parliamentary rules, which are those the presiding officer declares under the advise of the House parliamentarian. Maybe those are still in force now. I don’t know.

I haven’t seen a draft of the rules, and don’t know if they are still being negotiated over the weekend, but some of them are rather problematic. Such as a rule that would permit any member of the House (that would include Democratic members, by the way, as I understand it) to call for a vote of confidence on the Speaker. This could cause chaos and make the passage of controversial legislation impossible, unless the rules themselves constrain this power somewhat. And it will make us come closer to a parliamentary system, where votes of confidence bring down governments all the time. Of course, the vote here won’t bring down the government and lead to new elections; it will simply partially paralyze the existing government.

It will also add an element to the tough negotiations that always occur when difficult legislative decisions must be made. Think, for example, as to what will happen when negotiations over an increased debt ceiling are required this summer. When debate can be cut off by a member of Congress requesting again and again a vote of confidence on the Speaker or, more likely, when the Speaker is told “if you don’t do what we want, we will move for a vote of no-confidence”. Remember there will always be 212 Democratic votes ready to vote against a Speaker who is not able to control his/her own party.

Another change will apparently drop the Pelosi proxy voting rules. In part because of Covid, and I assume also because the House was so close in recent years, the last Congress allowed members of vote by proxy. No more, I hear. Now, all 435 members will have to be present to cast a vote. It is true that they got all elected members to attend the hearings for election of the Speaker (with a few minor exceptions for one hearing), but they can’t do that throughout a two year term. Covid and other diseases are still going to be around – and I don’t think anyone wants a Covid positive member of Congress to come to a session in person to cast a vote, do they?

This also could slow down legislation. It certainly adds another element to the Speaker’s decision to have a vote on a bill. With a Congress with only a 4 vote separation by party, I can see votes canceled at the last minute because someone important to the vote will be absent. This also will give extraordinary leverage to Republicans who do not want to see a particular bill passed. Another way to keep a bill from the floor (and if the Speaker doesn’t remove the bill from the agenda, what then? A vote of no confidence once more.)

Other issues won’t necessarily involve the rules package. There will be questions about committee assignments – were deals made to put Matt Gaetz in charge of important military affairs, will Marjorie Taylor Greene be given important assignments, what will Jim Jordan be as head of the Judiciary Committee? The Democrats (for good reason in my mind) did set the stage for what might happen next. They took Marjorie Taylor Greene off all committees; they rejected people like election denier Jim Jordan from serving on the Jan 6 Special Committee. Who knows what McCarthy might do in retaliation?

And we know the Republicans are fond of investigations. Look at all the time they wasted, for example, on the Benghazi investigation. Now, they have a big list of investigations they want to take up. Afghanistan. Hunter Biden. The Border. Hunter Biden. Politicization of the Department of Justice. Hunter Biden.

So what kind of McCarthy will Speaker McCarthy be? Will he be a Joe McCarthy who sets out the dogs to rankle and destroy his political enemies? Will he be a Charlie McCarthy, who will just mouth the words of his right wing ventriloquists? We know he won’t be a Gene McCarthy.

I expect the next month will be terrible, as the foxes will circle the hen house readying their attack, staking out their territory. The Republican party is clearly not united on many issues – they have, to a large part, like Pogo, found their enemy to be themselves. But the Democratic party, and we the people, are also their enemies, it appears.

And Kevin McCarthy? Egotist, election denier and Trump sycophant. He his now the chief fox in charge of a fragile hen house. We can only wait to see how this plays out.

And will Donald Trump play a role? That too remains to be seen.

One digression: This is now Day 6 of my head cold, and I am sick, sick, sick of it. Will you let whoever is in charge my head cold know, so they can do something about it? Thanks.

Tonight is the first full moon of 2023, the Wolf Moon for those of you who live where wolves are a protected species and spend their time howling outside your windows, or the Ice Moon for those of you who live in pre-Christian Europe (and Happy Holiday to you). The night of the Full Moon has been targeted as a time where particularly horrible events are more likely to occur. Those who have studied crime and other statistics say that this is fake news. But I say: what do they know?

I personally have never been bothered by a full moon – but the night prior to the full moon has always been a challenge for me. It is on that night that I am most likely to have a difficult time sleeping. This is true whether or not, upon going to bed, I know that it is Erev Full Moon.

Last night, I was determined to win my battle on the Eve of the Full Moon. And indeed I fell asleep rather quickly and assumed (or at least I assume that I assumed since I was asleep – duh) that I was the victor. But something happened at about 3:30 a.m. I heard a loud sound, or was it a scream and woke up abruptly. I quickly saw that everything was all right, and told myself to go back to sleep.

It wasn’t going to happen. As far as I know, I was up from 3:30 on.

Now, I did do some dreaming last night and, to be honest, I don’t know if my dreaming was done before or after 3:30. Either way, I think that the dreams were influenced by the Wolf Moon.

Edie and I were going to an outdoor concert to see a singer that we both liked. The singer was an older woman and we assumed that the crowd would be small. But as we approached the venue, it appeared that the audience would be enormous, and in fact, although we were early, we were shunted to a line of people waiting to get in. And we wondered if there was room, because the crowd seemed so dense. And we were far from the stage itself, which was not in sight.

We were told to sit down where we were, so we lost hope of getting anywhere near the performance. Next to me, there was a wide gravel path, which I took to be the course on which the horses would race. That, then, turned into a train track and a train came up which we were all told to enter. The train started up and we thought we were being transported to the concert. We went on and on and realized what a long walk (an impossibly long walk) it would have been.

The crowd was shepherded off the train and we all walked slowly forward. Then everyone was halted, and we were divided into two groups. We were in the first line of the second group. The first group kept going forward, but we were directed to the left, up stairs, down stairs, up an escalator, down an escalator, outside into a green area surrounded by monumental concrete buildings that looked like government buildings or maybe museums (I wondered what part of town we were in – this area was new to me), and then back inside and down a long, long, long corridor.

We were all quite distraught. One man read from a document, telling us that just last month, they controlled a crowd of 400,000 at this very place, and wondering why they couldn’t do it now. A young boy of maybe 8 years old looked at the document and said that the document didn’t say last month, but was dated years and years ago. The man apologized.

We never got to the concert and, at some time, we realized we were nowhere near where we wanted to be and that we, and the hundreds or thousands with us, were simply lost.

First, a digression. You see those two guys on Tik-Tok who tell what they call dad jokes? Such as:

1. My wife told me I was going deaf………… Boy, was that hard to hear.
2. Three conspiratorialists walk into a bar……… That sure can’t be a coincidence.

Back to my regularly scheduled programming. The village.

Next month, we are going to celebrate a special anniversary. Forty years in our house. Which was new when we moved in.

For the first forty years, you can pretty much ignore things, except at times of crisis. We did get a new roof about twenty years ago, and our insides (and outsides) have been painted a few times, one shower redone, and about five years ago we needed to redo our kitchen, but most things have been left on their own.

Over the past few months, the house has beginning to show its age. Our furnace conked out and needed to be replaced. We had to call an exterminator to rid ourselves of some small, unwanted guests. We needed to replace our kitchen faucet. The electricity went out in our basement guest room and bath. Our gutters needed cleaning.

And our outside, even after our lawn maintenance folks, trimmed and mulched for the winter, needed some sprucing.

We looked to see what we needed, and hired a company we have used before to: paint our outside trim, repair several woodpecker holes in the outside trim and install woodpecker shields, paint our exterior doors, replace some external wood trim that had outlived its useful life, and paint our front picket fence.

Three men showed up Tuesday morning to start the work. But since then the work has expanded, and keeps expanding. We decided that everything (house, walkways, patios and porches, driveway, and exterior stone walls all needed power washing, we added the garage door to the list of things to be painted outside, and trip around the doors, we added caulking for our two tiers of brick stairs in front, and on and on.

Well, when you get to be 40, things begin to go wrong, and you do need sometimes to have some plastic surgery. And one handyman can’t do it. You need a village. Or, even better, it seems you need a permanent staff. These guys are here forever.

As the Republican Party looks for a Speaker of the House, I will throw my support behind Jim Jordan. The other candidates are so old-school. They talk politely (even if out of both sides of their mouth), their wear suits or sport jackets, they don’t yell and scream. Frankly, they are boring.

But Jim Jordan? He throws off his jacket, rolls up his sleeves, and let’s out a big yell. There is nothing boring about him. Yes, it’s true, he is disgusting, but – more importantly – he is entertaining.

And who wants a Republican led House that isn’t entertaining?

Now, every candidates needs a theme song, and Jordan is not exception. I have selected a song that needs little changes in the lyrics that honors Jordan and his potential as Speaker of the House:

“House built on a weak foundation will not stand (oh, no).

Stories told through all creation, will not stand (oh, no)

Jim Jordan, he built a House oh

Jim Jordan, he built a House oh

Jim Jordan, he built a House oh

Jim Jordan”

Of course, Jordan says he does not want the job. He wants to lead the Judiciary Committee. For those who are not Jim Jordan supporters, I say: the thought of Jim Jordan leading Judiciary is enough to lead you to support him for Speaker instead.

It is going to be interesting. Clearly, the Republicans lack common goals, and leadership. Without leadership, you cannot achieve common goals, and without common goals, you cannot achieve leadership. In parliamentary societies, this is when parties split and collapse.

Let’s assume that the Republicans do elect a speaker. From everything we see, it will not be a speaker who is tempted to compromise with the Democrats in the House on any matters. After all, the new speaker probably won’t even want to compromise with other Republicans. Another blow to democracy. A do-nothing Congress by design.

Steve Bannon wanted to break down the administrative state. Because the election of Joe Biden, he was only partially successful. But his acolytes in the party may accomplish the same goal a different way, by breaking down the legislative state. And, as we know, they have already achieved in inflicting serious blows on the judicial state.

So, Democrats, don’t be too ambitious the next two years. Sit back and enjoy the show. And keep that administrative state strong.

By the way, in watching most of the voting yesterday out of the corner of my right eye while my left eye and part of my right eye were busy doing other things, I noted that the entire day in the House of Representatives was a festive one. Everyone was in good spirits. So much geniality and so many good spirits. Only two people seem to have been left out of the jollity.

One – unsurprisingly – was Congressman-elect-for-a-short-time George (nee Anthony) Santos (nee Devolder). No one wants to touch him with a ten foot pole. Can you imagine what his future life will be like?

The other was Elise Stefanik formerly moderate Republican, now MAGA lady, who nominated Kevin McCarthy for the Speakership. She gave him a rousing introduction, and then settled down in an aisle chair. She stayed in that chair watching everybody around her backslapping and joking, while she just sat there, ignored. Hmmm.

This afternoon I watched the NHL Winter Classic. The Boston Bruins faced the Pittsburgh Penguins at Fenway Park. The Bruins, the team with the best record by a comfortable margin this year, beat the Penguins, 2-1. It was a very good game, IMO, and the transformation of Fenway Park into an ice rink was interesting to see. I was rooting for the Bruins, a team I have no real feeling for. But I was rooting for them because I just don’t like the Penguins. Probably because, back in the day, the dumped Jaromir Jagr on the Caps, and then set up a rivalry with their combo of Crosby and Malkin. That’s long time ago. But I just don’t like them Penguins.

That’s on the one hand. On the other hand, I have always been fascinated with Penguin Books. No, not the books published today, but the soft cover books published from 1935 to 1961, with the single color covers – orange for fiction, purple for mystery, red for travel and adventure, and so forth. About 30 years ago (that’s a guess), I started purchasing these old Penguins, and eventually I would buy them wherever I saw them for sale, hoping that I wouldn’t buy one that I already had. I didn’t read any of these books (or maybe only a few), but I kept them together and they multiplied, until today I seem to have about 730 of them at last count.

A little over a year ago, I decided to read them. I have read about 10%.

There are very few of them that I can’t get through productively. And the majority are books that I have not read by authors whom I don’t know.

Over the last two days, I have read my first Penguin of 2023. I read “Foreigners” by Leo Walmsley. I never heard of the book or the author. And, were I not in the grip of my Penguin reading, I never would have heard of either.

It’s a great book. Walmsley, born in 1892, is enough of a name in British writing that there is actually a Leo Walmsley Society, which is holding its next annual meeting in May in Robin Hood’s Bay, a seaside town in North Umberland, England. South of Newcastle. Walmsley grew up here.

“Foreigners” is one of a series of memoirs of Walmsley’s childhood. It is a short book (219 pages), written in the first person, and tells the story of a scrappy English kid (he doesn’t say how old he is, but I would say somewhere between 11 and 13), who has a tough schoolmaster who likes to box children’s ears, friends and friendemies who like to fight each other (fists and kicks) when they are outside of school, financially struggling parents, and seafaring friends (it’s a fishing village). There are a accidents and scandals and tragedies, there are many fights, and problems with parents and officials. It’s written in the first person like all of these things have just happened, but the writing itself is so professional that it gives away the author’s maturity (he was in his early 40s).

Some new words to learn – scaur, coble, thwart (a noun) and others. And you really get a picture of what Robin Hood’s Bay is like. A very attractive part of the world, to be sure. Google it.

For more Penguins, stay tuned. The next book on my pile is “The Root of Heaven” about Romain Gary. Gary was an interesting guy. Born in Vilnius (when it was Wilno, or Vilna), he lived in France where he became a diplomat and author. He married Jean Seberg, the actress, but they divorced after he discovered her affair with Clint Eastwood (among many others). Seberg committed suicide (barbituates) when she was 40. Gary did the same (gunshot) about 10 years later. Yes, it is true. You learn so much from Wikipedia.

I finished watching The White Lotus yesterday. Two seasons. Thirteen episodes. First year on Maui, second on Sicily. Everyone that I know seems to have loved the series. But why? I don’t get it.

The primary location on each island is a resort, a Four Seasons in real life, and they are attractive to be sure, as are their surroundings. The acting is of good quality – I would say average for Cable or Netflix series. But the story line, and what has been explained as the satire, is weak. And the characters extremely uninteresting.

Take the second season. There are three generations of Italo-Californians, who come to see the town where the grandfather’s mother came from. There are two young power couples (the men were college roommates) whose neurotic relationships flounder and heal and flounder and heal. There’s the obnoxious wealthy woman, whose husband……..(well, anything I say here would be a spoiler) and her henpecked young female assistant who craves freedom from her boss. There are two young Italian women, at least one of whom is a hooker, and the other a would-be singer and entertainer. There are the hotel employees, who have their own narrative, and of course there are the gay mafia (“we don’t use that word on Sicily”) guys and their yacht and palazzo. How could you possibly put these people together and make it interesting?

I wouldn’t recommend it. But everyone else appears to.

Maybe it’s a matter of age. Maybe it’s just a matter of taste.

Edie and I watch TV series during the evening; I also watch them while I am on the stationery bike in the basement. And that means an hour or so a day, four or five days a week. That’s a lot of time.

Right now, I am in the middle of a South African series called Ludik – he’s a major furniture dealer in Pretoria, who has a sideline of shipping illegal diamonds across the south of Africa. I think it’s pretty good. It’s the second South African series I have watched. The other, which I liked as well, was not about smuggling diamonds, but about smuggling endangered wild animals. I don’t remember the name. It’s been a few years.

Moving backwards, here is pretty much all of the series I watched in the last half of last year (July through December). The first half of the year will follow sometime soon.

1. The Perfect Mom – French. A French woman married to a German living in Berlin discovers that her daughter, a student in Paris, has been arrested for murder, and goes back to her home town and her past to rescue her. Thumbs up.
2. Man on Pause – Turkish. A comedy about a Turkish man for whom everything turns out wrong. Even the simplest of things go awry. That makes him a schlmazl, right? (No, that’s not Turkish). Thumbs up.
3. Post Mortem: Nobody Dies in Skarnes – Norwegian. What do you do if your funeral parlor just needs more customers? Yep, you guessed it. A bit macabre. But Thumbs up.
4. 1899 – International/English. This one got a lot of attention. It started out weird, but it wound up so far beyond weird that I find it hard to recommend for anything but the acting and the imagination. It’s a little pretentious, too. After we watched the series, we watched an hour long “making of” program. That was better than the series itself.
5. Two Summers – French. Four couples (more or less) go to a Mediterranean island for a weekend 30 years after they all went away together as university students for a weekend. The first weekend was not very satisfactory, but compared to the second weekend……. Thumbs up, half way.
6. Deadwind – Finnish. Actually, this year we watched the third year; had watched the others already. Police detectives in Helsinki assigned to various cases don’t always like what they find. Thumbs up, half way.
7. The Stranger – Korean. More police detectives – one an investigator with a strange brain condition that takes away his ability to have any empathy, and the other a woman who has a hard time in a male denominated department. They eventually uncover the murderer. Thumbs up.
8. Emily the Criminal – American. A young woman with a load of student debt gets an offer she can’t refuse (but should have – perhaps). Stars Aubrey Plaza, who plays Harper on White Lotus. Thumbs up a tad.
9. From Scratch – American/Italian. A black Texan law student goes to Italy for a summer art program and comes back with an Italian boy friend and then husband. He’s a chef, and he dies at a young age of a rare cancer, leaving her to carry on. Thumbs up.
10. Capitani – Luxembourg. Two years, two story lines. A hard to handle police detective is efficient, but sometimes hard to understand. Thumbs up, half way.
11. Equinox – Danish. A woman is hell-bound to find out what happened to her sister who, along with a number of classmates, disappeared just before their high school graduation. She succeeds. Thumbs up, pretty much.
12. Beloscoaran – Mexico. Another detective series – this one off beat (wait a minute, they are all off beat). Thumbs up, half way.
13. The Devil in Ohio – American. A young girl escapes from a cult, but they don’t want to let her go. Thumbs up.
14. The Pursuit of Love – English (BBC). Based on the book by Nancy Mitford, two British cousins’ lives take very different directions. Thumbs up.
15. The Extraordinary Attorney Woo – Korean. A young autistic woman with a superior mind tries to make it big in the Seoul big firm law practice. Thumbs way up.
16. Quicksand – Swedish. A high school girl is accused, and tried, for murder. Thumbs up.
17. The Bonfire of Destiny – French. An explosion at a gift bazaar in turn of the 20th century Paris and what happened to all those involved. Thumbs up.
18. The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem – Israeli. A Sephardic family in Ottoman Jerusalem and their daughter. Thumbs up, pretty much.
19. Clark – Swedish. The story of the criminal for whom the Stockholm Syndrome was named. Thumbs up.
20. The Mire – Polish. Tracking down the murderer of two, long ago at a summer camp. Times change in Poland. Thumbs up.
21. Another Self – Turkish. Young women look for love and try to forget past loves. Thumbs down.
22. Borgen (Season 4) – Danish. The first female prime minister (and star of the first 3 seasons) returns to politics, this time as foreign minister. Greenland wants independence and a deal with China. Thumbs up.
23. Black Spot – French. Murders in a remote town in the South of France. Thumbs up.

I know that’s a lot to watch. And that doesn’t even cover those I started and then quit after the first or second episode. I don’t even have a full record of those.

From the descriptions above, you might think that I remember all these plots in great detail. On the contrary, they fade into each other at times. But I do remember the acting and some of the characters. And because these shows have taken place in so many locations, they help my still pandemic repressed wanderlust.

But am I in fact watching too much? Maybe so. I might need a Stop Watch.

After watching two more episodes of Better Call Saul (we are behind the time – just about to finish Season 2), we went upstairs and I felt a little weird, like a sore throat was coming on. The result was almost no sleep during the night and a bad sore throat this morning. Negative Covid test. No temperature. Cold-eze, and two aspirin, and a cup of coffee. We will see how I hold up today. Plans with the kids canceled.

Last night, we actually went out early, to the Kennedy Center to see old friends Little Red and the Renegades perform from 6 to 7 at Millennium Stage. As Harry Rado said (paraphrase): “We played the Kennedy Center once before, at a folk festival about 30 years ago. This is our triumphant return.” Harry and Tom Corradino (Little Red himself) were college friends of Edie’s, and I have known them more than 40 years. They played at Hannah’s wedding. It was a very festive hour; all were in good shape. Zydeco at its best. Want to hear the performance? You can – on the Kennedy Center website.

Back to the house before 8, picked up dinner at our neighborhood upscale Mexican restaurant (fish tacos, guacamole, and tres leches cake, shared with Michelle and Josh. And a little Prosecco to wash it down. Then Better Call Saul with our friends Rosie and Simon, who have been staying with us for a week while they visit their own 9 month old granddaughter. They are leaving this morning, and unfortunately we can’t give them a proper send off. But they will be back.

So, it’s a new year. I have no real resolutions. I always want to accomplish more than the year before. Hear more music. Get more exercise. Read more books. Etc. Etc.

Happy New Year to all. And to all, a good night.

I saw a fascinating poll the other day that suggested that Black Americans, on the whole, would rather be called Black than African-American, and that the more educated a White American was, the more likely that he/she would use the term African-American, rather than Black. You know….. a book could be written riffing off of that basic observation.

Decades ago, the American Jewish Committee in DC sponsored what they called (I think) a Black-Jewish dialogue, where once a month or so, a group of Blacks and Jews would get together for an informal lunch time conversation about whatever was on their minds. Someone who participated asked me to join the group, which I did for a short while. I didn’t find it particularly interesting or helpful.

But, I remember the day a long time Jewish member asked his “friend”, a long time Black member “What would you rather I call you, Black or African American?”. His friend looked at him, without missing a beat, and said: “To be honest, whichever you call me, I wish you called me the other.”

This is an essential truth, and it may explain the results of the recent poll. The problem is: what to do about it. If anything.

Group identification can be the slipperiest of slippery slopes. How do Americans define Blacks? It appears that anyone is Black who has a Black ancestor – it doesn’t matter how far back you have to go to find that Black ancestor. You have a Black great, great, great, great grandmother? You are Black. It was that way during the time of slavery, and it is that way now (although the consequences have changed).

In apartheid South Africa, this was not really the case. People of mixed races (even when one of those races was Black) were classified as Coloured, and subject to different rules than Blacks. And in French America, centered around New Orleans, there were different distinctions – quadroons, and octoroons, for example, again with different caste distinctions.

But not in this country.

Now, let’s turn to Hitler and the Nazis. Jews were defined by them as individuals with at least one Jewish grandparent. So, if you had only one Jewish great-grandparent, you were not Jewish and could live your life. When Israel was established in 1948, and when it sought to be a refuge for Jews persecuted by the Nazis, it actually adopted the Nazi definition as the definition of a Jew permitted to immigrate into Israel. If you had a Jewish grandparent and wanted to come to Israel you could (and still can) come, even if in your mind you weren’t Jewish at all.

Now this might change, as the ever more powerful Israeli religious right wants to change the definition of Jewish for the law of return to those who are Jewish according to Jewish religious law. Under this definition, one who has a Jewish mother is Jewish. Period. If your father was Jewish, and your mother was not, too bad. If your mother converted to Judaism, but not by an approved authority, also potentially too bad. Whether you self-identify as Jewish makes no difference.

Of course, there is more to this world than Blacks and Jews. What is the definition of an Uyghur, for example, or a Rohingya.

It’s a complicated world to be sure. But I think we know that already. We will see what 2023 brings.

Oh! Why did I title this “It’s Raining, It’s Raining”. Because, on this last day of the year 2022, it is raining.

The time is 5:30 p.m., December 30, 2022. This is the latest that I have written a post on this blog since I started it about 5 weeks ago. What is my excuse?

The temperature today climbed to above 65. The sky was blue. That was my excuse.

Does that mean that I took a 10 mile hike? Nope, it just means I was out and about.

I went to two different laundries, one drug store, one library, one thrift shop, UPS, the Post Office, one funeral home, one coffee shop, one fish store, and one restaurant for lunch. I put 30 miles on my car (Thanks, Prius – I got 70.3 MPG today). I stopped to take some photos. And my very nice lunch with a former law partner and friend (same person) took up almost two intellectually challenging hours.

So who has time to write? Or even has time to think about what to write?

But a couple of thoughts – today would have been my parents 81st anniversary. I thought about putting their picture on Facebook this morning, but realized something I hadn’t thought of before. I don’t think I have a photo of them together (other than maybe at a party or function where they weren’t the sole reason for the picture). Is that weird?

And then I thought of tomorrow night – New Years Eve – the anniversary of my father’s sister Irene and her husband Joe Frey. I think that they married a year or so before my parents. I could check and make sure, but it is already 5:47 and I have better things to do right now.

My Uncle Joe spoke with a heavy Mississippi accent (he was from Canton MS) and was living in St. Louis working as a young salesman for a uniform company – Angelica Uniform Company, it was called. He was a very brash young man, and I know that my grandparents and Irene’s siblings did not think him an appropriate family addition. But Irene liked him (obviously), and they went out for New Years Eve and she didn’t come home that night. Scandalous, they all thought. What to do? What sort of punishment would be appropriate?

Well, no punishment was given out, because when Irene and Joe came back to my grandparents’ house on Jan 1, they explained that it was alright that they stayed out all night because they (like me today) were very busy. What had they done? They got married.

Their marriage only lasted, say, 60+years. Joe died in his 90s and Irene lived to 102. Throughout virtually all of their marriage, they lived in Dallas and they were – wouldn’t you know it – in the uniform business. My memory is that they had shops in Dallas, Houston and Ft. Worth. Joe remained brash, and kept his Mississippi accent. He became, for the entire family, one of their favorite (if sometimes exasperating) relatives.

(A brief, but relevant, digression: do you know that Angelica Uniform still exists? It is headquartered in St. Louis, has about 7000 employees – I have read – and has been in business for 119 years.)

5:54 now. Dinner must be coming along.

2022 was still not a normal year, but I (sometimes, we) did eat in restaurants more than we did in 2020 or 2021. I tried this year to keep a record of where I (we) ate and what I thought of the restaurant. I graded them A through D, and was surprised to find that I had labeled 37 meals with an A. How generous I am. I was also surprised that of the 37 A meals, 21 were lunches and 3 were brunches, leaving 13 dinners. Of the 14 dinners, 11 were in the greater Washington area and 3 out of town. Of the 37 A meals, 24 were in the Washington area and 13 on one of our three trips out of town.

TMI? Of course…….but what do I care?

A few more points before I get to the nitty gritty. First, we didn’t really go trendy this year, so all those articles you see about popular new restaurants are irrelevant to our eating. And, you will see little correlation between ratings and price, or ratings and atmosphere, although both price and atmosphere (as well as location) are important to make a choice of where to go. Finally, it is possible to have an A meal at at restaurant and go again and have a very different experience – but you know that.

Our local A experiences for dinner:

1. I’m Eddie Cano – our neighborhood Italian restaurant 3 blocks from our house. We ate there or carried out numerous times – they get an A, especially for their eggplant parmesan, their fish stew, and their broccoli rabe.
2. Corazon DC – a casual Mexican restaurant on 14th Street near Randolph, with good food and even better margheritas.
3. Jetties – an even more casual place on upper Connecticut Ave in DC which has very fresh and tasty salads. The A is based on carrying out – not eating in.
4. Busboys and Poets – this local chain of restaurants can be inconsistent, but we had a very good meal in the Brookland branch one evening.
5. Capitol Grille, Friendship Heights – another chain, much more upscale; our good meal came at a 90th birthday party for a former law partner.
6. Oaxaca – a very casual Mexican restaurant in Bethesda. We ate there a second time, and thought it was awful.
7. Melina – a Greek restaurant in the Rose Pike section off the Rockville Pike. The food was excellent, but the prices so high that your digestion still suffered.
8. Sheba – an Ethiopian restaurant in Rockville, where you have ten choices of vegetarian dishes and can get them all with two mixed vegetarian meals.
9. Cafe of India – the closest Indian restaurant to our house; it’s always good but sometimes better than others, depending on what you order.
10. Muchas Gracias DC – our neighborhood Mexican restaurant across the street from I’m Eddie Cano – try the fish tacos.
11. Estadio – 14th and Church, DC – Spanish and always excellent – we had my birthday dinner here.

My local A experiences for lunch:

Tokyo-Taipei (Chinese/Japanese in Rockville); Parkway Deli (Deli in Chevy Chase); Spring Garden (Chinese on Wisconsin Ave in DC); Clydes (Friendship Heights); Kenny’s (Chinese carryout in Wheaton); Full Key (Chinese in Wheaton); Bistro Aricosia (Afghan on MacArthur in DC); Siam House (Thai in Cleveland Park); Neramitra (Thai in Arlington); First Watch (national chain in Bowie); and Maggiano’s (Italian in Friendship Height; s, where you overpay for lunch but get a full $5 pasta to take home); Curry House (White Oak MD).

Our only local A brunch: Rosemary Bistro, right next to I’m Eddie Cano, three blocks from home.

As to our out of town A meals (some lunch, some dinner), here goes (for what it may be worth): Mama’s Kitchen in Webster MA; Allison’s in Kennebunkport ME; Rochester Cafe in Rochester VT; Camp Fire in Saranac Lake NY; Mesa Grande Taqueria in Auburn NY; Mama di Roma in Fairmount WV; Guadalajara in Grayville IL; Santa Fe Bistro in Creve Coeur MO; Kingside Diner (Clayton MO); Sugo’s (Frontenac MO); Main Street Diner (Frankfort KY); and Princess Diner (Frostburg MD).

A motley assortment? Yup, I guess so.

I read the other day that when you dream, two different parts of your brain are involved, one which creates the dream, and one which watches it. I don’t know if that is really true, but it’s a fascinating idea. And it aligns with my busy night last night.

I had trouble sleeping. That’s not unusual for me, I’m afraid. But it’s the nights when I have trouble sleeping that I have the dreams that I remember best.

I remember parts of two dreams last night. The first was quite detailed, although I don’t remember very much of it. But I do remember that I was part of a small group listening to a presentation on how utilities are financed in Massachusetts. (What? You think this is an unusual dream?) I remember listening carefully, and then I remember asking questions in my dream. I remember wondering if the utilities in Massachusetts were publicly owned or privately owned. I asked that, but don’t remember the answer. Then I had a more complicated question that I asked. And I asked it politely. I remember saying something like: “I want to step back a bit. Are these utilities financed with one loan that covers both the construction period and the post-construction period, or are they separate loans?”. I think I was told that there was one loan only, and I wondered what the flexibility was if circumstances changed, such as a drop in general interest rates.” What can I say? It was my dream.

The second dream was very different. I had an Italian friend (perhaps he was American, but was ethnically Italian). Either I picked him up at the airport, or he picked me up, but in any event on our way from the airport we were going to have a meal (lunch? dinner?) at an Italian restaurant he told me was very authentic. But we pulled up at a gas station. There were many gas pumps. But next to the door to the gas station office was another door with a sign over it that said “Spaghetti”. We went into that door, down a cement hallway, and into a large room where the mechanics were working on cars. We walked through that room (everyone was friendly) and went through a door at the back. All of a sudden we were in the foyer of a very upscale restaurant. The maitre d’ welcomed us and asked if we had a reservation. We didn’t. And he took us through the very crowded, white table cloth restaurant to a flight of stairs that went up to the second floor, a loft floor which was not quite as formal, but which overlooked the downstairs room. There were four people at one other table, but every other table was empty. We got one for two where we could look downstairs. What did we eat? How was it? No clue.

Yep, that’s what you dream when you’re 80.

Well, an argument can be made that Republicans are not sleeping dogs. Why not? Because they are neither sleeping, nor dogs, I guess. But then Blue Dog Democrats (the conservative branch of that party) are neither blue, nor dogs, so I think the Sleeping Dog title works pretty well.

Let’s analyze it:

Of course, you have to start with Donald Trump (unless you want to go all the way back to Nixon), who lies, and lies, and lies, and lies, and virtually all the Republicans (with the exceptions we can all name now, and virtually all of whom will be out of office in 2023) have just let him lie.

Then there are all those Republicans who, after January 6, had an immediate reaction to condemn the riots and the then president’s role in them, but who later (and not much later at that) reversed themselves 180 degrees and praised the president, even though they didn’t believe him at all praiseworthy. They too lied and lied and lied.

And then there are the election deniers, some of whom are delusional enough to believe what they have been saying, but presumably most of whom (and especially most of those who are political or media influencers) know the election results were very accurate. Another group who lied, and lied and lied and lied.

There were those who backed candidates like Herschel Walker, knowing that his victory would help the Republican Party retain a modicum of influence over the Senate agenda, even though they knew he was no more qualified to be in the Senate than their own pet dogs. Yet they extolled his qualifications, judgment and virtue, all the time lying and lying and lying.

And now (although there are other examples I could mention if I wanted to turn this into a book) there is George Santos, elected to Congress from Long Island, although the only things on his resume that is truthful is his name. In fact, I am probably concluding this too quickly – who knows what his name really is, after all? What will the Republicans do now? Will they vote to seat him in the House of Representatives that they now will control? Or will there be a half dozen Cheneys or Kinzingers to vote against him? And will the Republican leadership under Sleeping Dog McCarthy even allow a vote to be taken?

So (and you heard/saw it here first) – there may be still some Blue Dog Democrats, but they are far outnumbered by the Sleeping Dog Republicans. And what will the rest of us do? Will we just let the Sleeping Dog Republicans lie??

I say that because it’s natural to think that the lighting of the eighth candle last night ended the holiday. But it is still Hanukkah until the sun goes down this evening. And how is the last day of the holiday celebrated? By ignoring it.

As to Federal holidays (see yesterday’s article), today is Christmas. Yes, it’s the 26th, not the 25th, but because Christmas fell on a Sunday this year, the government moved the holiday to today. Well, I guess that’s ok for government work.

The District of Columbia is, for the purpose of holidays, a branch of the Federal government. So all government (Federal and District) offices are closed today, schools are closed, libraries are closed, post offices are closed, and so forth. So why is trash collection happening? Answer me that, and you win a prize.

Going back to Hanukkah, here are the three things that I learned this year. Because I am not naming names, there is no attribution, but if you want to know how I learned these things, email or contact me and I will tell you privately. And if you are the source and want to be identified, let me know.

1. For those of you who plan ahead, please be advised that there will be no Hanukkah in the year 3031! By quirk of the Jewish calendar (or, perhaps, by quirk of the Julian calendar), there will be two Hanukkahs in 3032 – the first one starting on January 1, and the second in late December. I will remind you again as the date draws closer.
2. Hanukkah is not 8 days long because the candles (or the oil) burned 7 extra days when the Temple was retaken from King Antiochus. Or if the burning did go on that long, nobody realized it until many years after the Maccabees revolted. It is 8 days long (so says Josephus and the Second Book of Maccabees according to my unnamed source) because Sukkot is 8 days long and the holiday of Sukkot had been banned by Antiochus, and it was determined to celebrate an off-season Sukkot once the Temple was restored.
3. There are, as you may know, actually 9 candles on a Hanukkiah. Eight represent the days of the holiday and the 9th is the shammes, the candle you actually light with a match and then use to light the other 8. In the film of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Lauren Bacall asks Humphrey Bogart what he is. He tells her “I’m a shammes”. He is actually a private detective. And why is a private detective a shammes? According to my unnamed friend (who has researched and published on the subject), it goes as follows: Back in the day, in synagogues across Europe, the man who assisted the rabbi in maintaining the facility (turning on the lights, keeping it clean, putting the books back in the right place, making sure things went on time, and providing a modicum of security was known as a shammes. He was primarily an assistant. Because the 9th candle is used to assist in lighting the other 8 candles, the 9th candle began to be known as the shammes. As Jewish shopkeepers began to spread across the United States in the late 19th century, they began to call the men whom they hired to perform the same duties as a shammes in a synagogue their shammes. One of the most important roles of the retail shammes was to provide security – to make sure people paid for what they took. The security providing aspect of the shammes was then transferred to provide detectives as the years went by. Of course, no one today calls a detective a shammus. And perhaps, in years gone by, no one did other than Raymond Chandler.

What did you learn this Hanukkah?

Let me make one thing perfectly clear (to quote someone from our past): I have nothing against Christmas.

Now that that is out of the way, let’s move onto the United States Constitution. The First Amendment, which says (in part): “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.”

Only Congress has the power to create federal holidays under 5 USC Section 6103, and on June 28, 1870, Congress declared Christmas (along with New Years Day, Independence Day, and Thanksgiving Day) a federal holiday, an act signed into law by President Grant.

Today, there are 11 Federal holidays. None of the others has a religious significance.

It seems clear to me that the declaration of Christmas as a federal holiday clearly violates the Constitution, but that – for any number of reasons – its designation has been challenged only sporadically in the courts and never taken to the highest levels of appeal. Certainly, no Supreme Court has ever been asked to rule on the question.

The arguments in favor of constitutionality are, I believe, largely rationalizations, and they go to forcing those supporting the federal holiday to argue that, basically, Christmas is not a religious holiday at all, or that it is a combined religious and secular holiday, and that the secular nature of Christmas overrides its religious origins. In other words, for those of you who deride the commercialization of Christmas: it is only this commercialization that allows it to stand as a federal holiday.

The most recent challenge to Christmas as a federal holiday that I have uncovered was brought in 1999, and dismissed by United States Judge Susan Dlott of the Southern District of Ohio with the following quip:

“An extra day off is hardly high treason, it may be spent as you wish regardless of reason.”

One more rationalization, I fear.

But back in the day, as I understand it from what little Googling I have done, in 1870, Christmas was not even universally celebrated and that, in fact, in this country it was much more a Southern than a Northern holiday and that Grant wanted it to be a national holiday to help ease the South back into the Union. The celebration of Christmas as a religious holiday grew in this country in the 19th century; remember the Pilgrims and other religious sects in this country outlawed the celebration of Christmas. And the pervasive celebration of Christmas as a commercialized holiday did not begin to occur until well after the Civil War into the 20th century.

Obviously, I don’t really know a lot about this subject, although I find it very interesting. Particularly interesting is what today’s Supreme Court would say if a challenge to Christmas as a Federal holiday was before it. I don’t think they would adopt Judge Dlott’s rationale – it is (and I have not read her decision, only the couplet) pretty silly, I think.

The Supreme Court today is an originalist court, right? They look back to what the founders thought when they wrote the Constitution. If they looked at the way Christmas was observed in 1783, what would they find? Would they find it a religious holiday, a secular holiday, or not really a holiday at all? And if they, in their heart of hearts, decided that the founders would never have picked Christmas to be other than a day of religious significance, how would they rule? I can’t imagine that they would declare the designation of Christmas as a federal holiday as being unconstitutional, can you, even if in fact it is?

To repeat: I am not against Christmas. I am not part of the non-existent war against Christmas. So why am I posting this?

Because I think that the Congressional designation of a Christian religious holiday as a federal holiday clearly violates the Constitution, but that it is very unlikely that any court would so declare but would continue to rationalize its acceptability, and that this conundrum is one of the underlying problems we have as a “constitutional” republic as we discuss other, and more important, matters.